State unfazed by criticism of voting machines

By Patrick Parkinson, Park Record    03 August 2005

As the criticism of electronic voting machines builds, Utah officials appear determined to purchase equipment rejected last week by California's secretary of state.

The state's top elections officer, Utah Lieutenant Governor Gary Herbert, is currently meeting with county commissions around Utah to explain why he authorized the purchase of the Diebold touch-screen machines for Utah voters.

In order to comply with requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), Utah's 29 counties agreed to allow a ion committee to examine different types of machines and recommend to Herbert how $27 million in state and federal HAVA funds should be spent.

The committee picked Diebold electronic machines, which opponents say can easily be hacked into by someone technologically savvy enough to navigate the Internet.

HAVA was passed in the wake of the 2000 election to ensure more accurate vote counts and access to the polls for the disabled.

"There was a failure rate of about 10 percent, and that's not good enough for the voters of California and not good enough for me," California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson told The Oakland Tribune last Thursday.

Jammed printers and other Diebold seizures reportedly plagued a July 20 mock election in California.

"They can be used to rig elections," said Park City resident Kathy Dopp, a Diebold critic and founder of the organization, Utah Count Votes. "[Diebold] is so easy to hack."

Dopp has all but begged the Summit County Commission to not follow Herbert's lead and to purchase machines she claims are more suitable for conducting elections.

"The Diebolds are the ones with the worst reputation because they've been examined so many times by computer scientists and found to be totally inadequate," she said during an interview Monday. "They've been prohibited from using them in California."

Not only are Diebold machines insecure but they also do not provide an easily verifiable paper trail, Dopp claims.

Additional computer equipment is required to audit the machines' internal paper rolls, however, Diebold has never demonstrated the equipment and state elections officers have not budgeted for the items, Dopp said.

"I've never heard of Diebold actually demonstrating any system to count its paper rolls," she adds.

But paper can be removed from the machines on Election Day and votes counted by hand if discrepancies arise, said Michael Cragun, director of Utah's elections division.

"One ballot could be six feet long, so tell me how you are going to count that by hand," Dopp countered.

Summit County Commissioner Sally Elliott says she will ask Herbert whether the county can receive HAVA money from the state to purchase different voting machines. The County Commission is scheduled to meet with the lieutenant governor in Coalville Aug. 15.

"It would be silly for us to make a decision before we have all the facts," Elliott said. "I'm very concerned with the security of the system and the allegation that it can be manipulated without traces."

Local governments in Utah can purchase whichever machines they choose, however, only Diebold supporters will receive state and federal funding, Cragun said.

"Unless the county puts out [a request for bids] very quickly, they're not going to have other options and they should at least give themselves other options," Dopp said.

According to Cragun, the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission has certified Diebold touch-screens, which cost about $3,200 each.

"We have confidence in our partnership with Diebold," Cragun said, adding that state contracts with the company have not been finalized. "The state plan is the Diebold machines."

But Utah County is conducting is own bid process, he adds.

"In the end, it was the evaluation that Diebold was far and away the best recommendation," Cragun said, adding that polls in the state must be HAVA compliant by January of 2006.

Dopp prefers optical-scan technology rejected by the state, where ballots marked by hand are fed through a computerized counter.

But touch-screen equipment is the most accurate and can provide election returns much quicker than the punch-card ballots currently used in Utah, said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman, adding that roughly 55,000 Diebold machines were used in the U.S. in 2004 without incident.

California is the first state to require and attempt to certify Diebold's paper ballot, Bear said, adding that the company is still working out the bugs.

"[California] ran nearly 11,000 ballots and they had 10 paper jams," he said. "This is a new procedure for the state and a new product for us, but we're working through that."

Diebold officials expect to resubmit the machines for certification in California.

"I'm looking forward, as many legislators are, to getting a report from the lieutenant governor's office on the ion, how it was made, what they were considering and how much it ultimately is going to cost," said state Sen. Dave Thomas, R-South Weber. "I'm taking a wait-and-see approach because I don't have all of the information."